Till Kingdom Come
by My Sharpie Is Green
Summary: And she's feeling out of place for a wedding, especially her own...


**AN:** I, sadly, am not J.K. Rowling. I can't take credit for any characters or locations (nor can I take credit for the title, that belongs to Coldplay), only for the plot, which I'm rather fond of, so review, won't you?

**.x. Till Kingdom Come .x.**

_We are the shooting stars, the celestial wonders of our generation. From great distances we glisten and glimmer, so unreachable and untouchable. We are the wonderments, the beacons of a people so careworn and desperate that to deny them their heroes would be cruel. However, in all our beauty and our grace, we are dying. Our light is caused by our descent into nothingness; after the end of this trying war, our stars will have disappeared from the heavens, and others will take our place._

**. x .**

It's dreamlike, almost, in a nightmarish sort of way. He faces her, looking nice but not as nice as she had once pictured and she's standing there in her ivory dress, her hair down by her shoulders and feeling very out of place for a wedding, especially her own. This is not the way she had imagined it when she was younger and still believed in magic – things like miracles and true love and 'happily ever after', not the types of things they taught in spell books – but there were no more fairy tales these days. They had been replaced with modern horror stories, and the few that survived had been so picked over that the ones that remained were hardly worth the struggle.

The Muggle priest looks down at them and then to their two witnesses, her brother and best friend, two members of the trio she has grown to love so much. He looks into her eyes, his stronger hands encompassing her delicate ones as the priest begins to read aloud scriptures that she has never heard and that are only vaguely familiar to him, as though dredged up from a former life. He mouths to her the words, _Are you nervous?_ and, sadly, she replies, _Not about this._ They share a bittersweet smile, their thoughts intermittently disrupted by the passage being read.

…_Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one…_ She looks at him and squeezes his hand. A fairy tale romance was never for them. They would never be like her mother and father, their love radiating from the kitchen where she had worked for hours to ensure he had a warm meal to come home to after a long day of work. They could love only from a distance; their love would kill them were it ever any stronger.

The priest gives him permission to kiss his bride, and he hesitates for a split second at hearing the word. Then, in joy and desperation, he kisses her so gently as she places a soft hand on his cheek. She is porcelain, he is porcelain, they are porcelain, and their entire world could shatter with the most minute disruption and he knows this. He knows this and that is why he needs to feel her next to him and place his lips on hers – she is his wife and he loves her, and the thought of life without her makes him ache in a way that no magic could cure. He breathes the words "I love you" into her ear as they break away, happy for a moment, and she responds the same. He walks her out of the church, her hand is his, and they enter a world where no one will recognize them, even if they'll only be there for a time. He knows that they can't stay there, that they've been gone too long already, and, terrified of arousing suspicion, they return separately to Number 12 Grimmauld Place and, later that night, they share what they wish could be an everlasting kiss, and he tries to think of a way to both protect her and love her like she deserves.

She can feel his lips on her forehead as they lay, tangled, under the threadbare sheets that, she thinks to herself, Sirius Black slept under years ago, back before this mess had started. Her thin fingers are wrapped in his unruly hair, and her eyes are closed. She wishes they could always have this kind of quiet, solitary peace, but she knows this isn't possible. "Sometimes," she hears herself say, "Sometimes I wish you wouldn't go." He stops kissing her and pulls himself away, sitting up, and she can see the sorrow in his eyes without looking at him.

"I have to. Everyone depends on me."

"I depend on you, too." Immediately, she hates herself for saying it. It sounds so awful, she thinks, horrible and selfish. He can't help it, she knows this. He didn't choose the life he leads.

"You knew what you were getting yourself into, Gin. You knew what it was like, loving the Boy Who Lived." He voices his epithet with disgust and bitterness, and she wants to cry for what this war has done to them all. She kisses him in apology, and he accepts it. As they fall back on the bed, she thinks that even though he's right next to her, it feels as though he's already gone…

**. x .**

_We are the shooting stars, the celestial wonders of our generation. From great distances we glisten and glimmer, so unreachable and untouchable. We are the wonderments, the beacons of a people so careworn and desperate that to deny them their heroes would be cruel, and we are fading fast…_


End file.
